


Prophecies & Promises

by spinsterclaire



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Snowed In, Teen Pregnancy, Valonqar Prophecy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-03
Updated: 2015-02-03
Packaged: 2018-03-10 07:29:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 15,129
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3282065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spinsterclaire/pseuds/spinsterclaire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When the 18-year old Lannister twins find themselves locked out of their father's townhome, they visit an old acquaintance to escape the Manhattan blizzard. There, they must confront their fears about keeping promises, accepting fate, and bringing new life into the world.</p><p>A winter-themed, teenage-pregnancy AU. (Or as I like to call it: "My Go At Fluffy Jaime/Cersei.")</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [theelusiveflamingo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/theelusiveflamingo/gifts).



> This is for one of my favorite human beings ever - Jenn! I know it's a MILLION months late but HAPPY BELATED B-DAY, LOVER. Thank you for being such an amazing friend and adopted older sister. I don't know what I'd do without our fangirling (even over things you don't give a shit about, B L E S S.) or your compassion and advice. Your sly lesbian Sassy-nach loves you more than you know :)  
> Enjoy!!!

“Did you know a baby can recognize the voice and smell of its mother at birth?”

Jaime Lannister is leaning against the stove, eyes rounded in the easily earned astonishment of a parent discovering the abilities of their firstborn. A lock of golden hair falls over one furrowed brow. He looks a damn fool trying to discern the words on the page without the aid of his glasses, squinting as drastically as he is. He brings the whole of Mind in the Making closer to his face so that the long, straight-edged nose is buried within a collection of baby trivia, rereading each sentence with the devotion of a priest before his god. It’s as much an act of assuring he’s seeing things correctly as it is of absorbing each factual tidbit possible. He scribbles a sloppy note in the margins: _What about the father?_

Jaime holds the book it as if he were Moses himself, clutching the beloved Commandments to his breast. He distractedly stirs the pot of boiling noodles behind him, half distracted, and scans the remainder of the page. A rainbow of crumpled post-its stick out here and there like errant hairs, rustling with the frantic turning of pages.

(“Onto 305 now! _Ha!_ ” He had cried triumphantly two hours before. “How far are you?” But his competitor had been snoring soundly, her own barely-disturbed copy of the book spread open to page 102 on her chest.)

Jaime’s incredulity turns to bitter disappointment when he comes up from his search empty-handed. _Surely there must be_ something _…_

“There’s nothing here about the baby recognizing the father,” he worries aloud, aggressively flipping through the next couple of pages to see if he’s missed his mark. He hasn’t. “Nothing at all!” His head swivels around the small divider separating kitchen from lounge, and he gives his sister a look of genuine concern.

“Mmmm,” Cersei replies, only half-interested, and she shifts uncomfortably on the leather sofa. Her belly makes movement difficult, but she manages well enough, having grown accustomed to the required heave-and-ho after seven months of pregnancy. She grunts, shifts her overbearing weight to the side and sighs into the cushions once more, feeling the ache of her limbs subside in the newly assumed position.

“ _God_ , this can’t be over soon enough,” she moans. But Jaime merely ignores her – as he usually does whenever she complains of the rigors of carrying life inside her. She sometimes thinks _he_ would rather be the one with the morning sickness, the back pain, the incessant food cravings…If only because he doesn’t necessarily trust _her_ with the job.

The townhome smells of spaghetti, oregano, and parmesan, and she can almost taste the flavors dancing on her tongue, conjuring images of an Italian piazza far removed from blizzarding Manhattan. She’s been pestering Jaime all day to make his homemade Bolognese, and after promises of a 24-pack and a blow job, he had finally conceded with a suggestive smirk and wiggling brow. (The beer had been offered promptly, though the blow job would have to wait for a time when moving didn’t make her want to vomit.)

Of course, said Bolognese was unlikely to materialize if Jaime kept pausing to familiarize himself with the ins-and-outs of babydom. He had been in the kitchen for an hour now, making no remarks as to the progress of his cooking, only intermittently supplying the odd fact about a baby’s this-or-that.

“Is everything almost ready?” Cersei asks expectantly. The thud of book against counter, the rattle of the pot clanking against the bottom of the sink announces the answer as a definite “No”. _Dammit._ Fleetingly, she regrets granting the household staff’s week-long dismissal, though their presence would’ve meant sacrificing what scant alone time she and Jaime had together. Now, though, food seems a fair trade for the meddlesome hustle and bustle of their father’s fat French cook and three doting assistants...

“Uh – uh, just a minute…Almost done…Just need to strain the…” Jaime begins, but the stuttered reassurance is soon cut off by a resounding “Fuck”. It manages to get even Cersei on her feet faster than you can scream…

“ _FIRE!_ ”

Which is _exactly_ what has earned the rude shouting of the expletive – and the torrent of others following it, all spoken just as colorfully in Jaime’s thick British accent as their predecessor. The rising tongues of flame cast an orange glow about the kitchen, providing a stark contrast to the bluish-gray gloom of the New York tundra outside. Their greedy fingers begin seeking purchase on all burnable objects within the vicinity, finally settling for the roll of paper towels placed just left of the raging stove. Cersei peers inside the fiery haze and recognizes the source of the blaze: a now-charred box of angel hair left irresponsibly on the hot stovetop.

“Bloody Christ, Jaime!” she screams, but he’s already coming at her with hands outstretched, pushing her out of the small kitchen as he lists all the ways in which a baby’s health can be jeopardized by smoke and heat, even in pregnancy.

But the clinical predictions of doom are soon drowned out by the deafening bleep of the fire alarm and the thick cloud of smoke now filling the confined space, suffocating Jaime into a forced silence. His mouth contorts into a slanted _O_ mid-diagnosis, fumes spilling into a half-opened mouth not quite finished speaking of respiratory failure and asthma.

Jaime coughs loudly into his fist while his other hand still gropes outwards to remove his sister from the disaster site. It takes him a second to realize that his fingers are merely grabbing fistfuls of air, Cersei having since fled the scene and sought safety elsewhere during his relentless hacking.

 _Good_ , he thinks as he strips off his jacket and beats the ever-growing flames into a reluctant submission. He slaps the garment violently against his burning enemy, thoughts of his unborn child addled with lung cancer fueling the vengeful power of his blows.

“Get out of the way, you sod!” he hears suddenly, a familiar voice muffled by something dutifully concealing the mouth barking instructions. Jaime turns to find Cersei standing there, armed with the fire extinguisher and holding a bathroom washrag to the lower half of her face. With the red implement in hand and the stomach of a woman nearly full-term, the sight of his sister gamely playing fireman is hilarious enough to drive him into an awed stillness.

“You asked for it!” she yells, finally aiming and spraying the extinguisher towards the burning stove and countertop. The plume of dust blows angrily into Jaime’s face, coating him head-to-toe in a heavy griminess on its charge towards smothering the blaze. He remains rooted to the spot, flustered.

Flames finally quenched, the townhome empties itself of the stifling heat and burrows beneath its new white blanket of extinguisher resin. The scene is not unlike the one outside, though their apartment smells so thoroughly of smoke, burning pasta, and chemicals that every moment spent indoors is an odorous attack on the senses.

Jaime can feel every inch of his body covered in the stuff, caked in the folds of his shirt and creases of his face so that he’s transformed into an immobile, ivory statue. When he opens his eyes at last Cersei is standing in front of him, and the grimness of her expression leaves Jaime wishing he’d opted to feign permanent blindness. Better to deny the disaster completely than have to suffer a scolding from his increasingly hormonal twin sister.

But the sight of her brother sputtering and blinking owlishly amongst the smoky, clouded chaos causes the burbling of a giggle to escape Cersei’s lips. She’s on him in a second, hard belly pressed against his own, chest reverberating in the girlish laughter that always makes his heart skip a beat.

“You look downright ridiculous,” she says between breaths. “Your eyelashes are all white.” She kisses the bridge of his nose, leaving behind a small spot of peachy flesh, a suggestion of winter melting to spring.

“S’pose we’ll be going out for dinner then?” Jaime says sheepishly, though the howling of the wind outdoors is enough to make him want to forgo supper altogether. Perceptible as always to his every movement, Cersei notices her twin’s wayward gaze and shakes her head furiously, pointing to her stomach as sufficient explanation for the necessity of food.

“Alright, alright…” he acquiesces and he runs a careless hand through his hair.

Jaime kneels to one knee, ghostly face now level with his unborn child, and speaks as though it stands in front of him, warm and beautiful like the mother it already knows so well.

“I’ll fetch my coat, hm?”


	2. Chapter 2

“You realize Father is going to murder you, right?”

Cersei and Jaime are walking side by side along a deserted avenue, coat collars lifted to shield their faces from the needle-sharp pricks of descending sleet. They had dined at the corner pizzeria – the only place nearby whose offerings seemed to agree with the rumblings of Cersei’s fickle stomach – and though it was a far cry from Jaime’s homemade Bolognese, the gooey slices of Brooklyn-style pie had left them feeling decidedly content. Ensconced in the glow of florescent lights and framed by the checkered wallpaper, Cersei had somehow looked completely at home in the tacky, faux-Italian milieu. Jaime had found himself in no rush to leave, rather relishing the smells and feel of their temporary safe-haven, how they managed to tame the remnants of his internal chaos and ward off the cold outdoors. Cersei had propped her swollen feet up on a chair as he’d tried to speak Italian to her, both drunk on the kind of love that only comes from knowing they’d escaped one disaster to remain still firmly on the brink of another. They _needed_ each other in more ways than one, and the squirming child in Cersei’s belly bore testament to that.

It had been the mustached chef who had ended their fun, eager to close up shop before the inclement weather took a turn for the worse. He’d hurried them out onto the curb with farewell pats approaching rudeness, muttering half-hearted apologies in his foreign tongue while looking worriedly at the sky.

They had walked two blocks since they’d left, precariously navigating the ice-splotched sidewalk with careful strides, both bent on returning home quickly but still fully intact. Cersei’s palm against Jaime’s keeps him anchored safely to the ground, a strange nucleus of warmth among the surrounding cold, and he’s all the more grateful for it.

“Just like he murdered _you_ when he found out his eighteen year old daughter had gotten herself pregnant?” Jaime’s tone is joking but the words sting his sister nonetheless, and he quickly rushes to make his amends. (After all, there had been no shouts or threats. Only a month-long silence that conveyed enough disdain so as to sufficiently serve as a punishment.)

“Mmm,” Jaime promptly concedes, “Father will murder me – especially when he realizes I’m the cause of both.” They share a low, grumbling chuckle that is barely audible over the gale, but it’s there and the forgiveness is both extended and accepted by their respectable parties. They move on down the sidewalk as one synchronized unit; left foot, right foot, left foot, right foot.

Cersei wraps her fingers through Jaime’s and squeezes tightly. “We’ll clean house before he gets back,” she assures, face sprouting a derisive smirk. “Well. _I’ll_ sit down with a carton of ice cream and _you’ll_ do the cleaning.”

“Oh, Mistress Lannister – I _do_ love it when you talk domestic to me.”

Jaime and Cersei are currently staying in their father’s townhome for the week, playing house and ensuring the various hired help take no advantage of their employer’s absence. On holiday from Princeton University, Jaime had arrived the previous day to find his twin sister in the throes of her usual morning routine: violently puking in the bathroom toilet. While not exactly the homecoming Jaime had imagined, he’d been at least pleased to find his twin smiling in between torrents of vomit and subsequent dry heaving. It seemed that not even pregnancy-induced sickness could dampen the joy Cersei felt at the brief respite from Tywin Lannister’s overbearing presence. To call living in the same city as her father “trying” was to understate matters entirely – and that was even before news of the child had left her forcibly sequestered in his home. Sharing the same space with him – the same television and washing machine and food – was near enough to do Cersei in, once and for all.

Tywin would be returning to Manhattan in two days’ time, having left the country for a business trip across the pond (though “business trip” was a term best used loosely in this particular circumstance). While Tywin Lannister would assuredly be taking care of some menial affairs concerning his company, Lannister Inc, the excursion to London was more an excuse to visit the lover he mistakenly thought no one knew about.

“Come to think of it, Father actually can’t murder either of us,” Cersei states, voice confident even over the relentless wind. “Our corpses on his apartment floor might draw some attention to his personal life…” She clears her throat, almost speaking the unspeakable, but merely laughs instead.

Their father had lived lavishly – albeit, rather isolated – for the past eighteen years since his wife’s death, never dating or entertaining any flirtatious acquaintances despite the encouragements of his three children. Only recently, however, had it been discovered that their father was one more inclined to rather…Well, different tastes than they’d all originally assumed.

Jaime snorts. “Are you suggesting, dear sister, that one might find Aerys Targaryen’s sex toys in our father’s dresser drawers?”

“Something of the sort, I’d wager,” Cersei giggles, though she cringes visibly inwards at the thought of Tywin Lannister sharing a bed with the ancient Targaryen loon. It was Tyrion who’d first learned of the torrid affair last September, when he’d found Aerys Targaryen thrusting furiously against the prostrated figure of their father. And likewise, it was Tyrion who found himself abruptly shipped off to an Indonesian boarding school the following month, a means of keeping his mouth firmly shut – and on the other side of the world, no doubt. Tywin Lannister left no risks unchecked when it came to the preservation of his puritanical, Republican reputation.

As if echoing in its mother’s repressed disgust for the lie, Cersei suddenly bowls over in pain, letting loose an anguished gasp against all efforts to remain poised and unaffected by the sharp kick to her gut.

Jaime, of course, swoops to the immediate rescue, spewing a number of different things he’d gleaned during his hours of reading. _Breathe this way, breathe that way, stand up straight, now bend over again. And hooooold._

“Bloody hell, Jaime,” Cersei curses eventually, prying him off her like a leech suckling skin. “I’m fine. The bloody bastard is just stronger than a damned brute at this point…” She stands up, collects herself, and pulls her stunned brother along towards the townhome now in sight.

“Cersei, are you sure you don’t just…” Jaime tries to block her path, but she plows ahead anyways, feeling the black spots of nausea and lightheadedness creeping gradually into her vision. She’d be damned if she pukes here on the sidewalk – and she’d certainly be hard-pressed to do it in front of her twin. His lithe frame and finely contoured face had remained so infuriatingly the same while she had expanded, sagged, and ached her way through the most uncomfortable of bodily transformations. 

“ _Jaime,”_ she spits, “all I need right now is to get out of this fucking blizzard and into bed. Now let’s _go_.” She yanks him hard and he follows, shame-faced, though he’s still muttering parental advice under his breath as they near their father’s Brownstone.

“Right, then,” Jaime says once they reach the correct stoop. “Home, bed, no blizzard. A pint of ice cream in the fridge…and a pint for me, eh?” He warms happily at the thought of the fizzing amber liquid sliding down his throat, shutting out the biting chill.

“Excellent.”

Jaime reaches a hand inside his pocket to retrieve the front door key, and his fingers’ sudden scrambling sends shocks of panic down Cersei’s spine. She inches closer, ready to pounce on whatever additional faults her brother has made tonight, already tasting the salty bitterness of insult on her tongue.

“I, er, uh…” he stammers, still groping furiously for the small key but ultimately finding nothing, save a couple of nickels and a spare cigarette. “I know I brought it…”

“Jaime…” Cersei says with a hint of warning. She feels the child kick a second time – always attuned to its mother’s emotions, the bugger.

“I _know_ I brought it.” Jaime shifts his glasses high upon the bridge of his nose as if this action alone would incite the key to reveal itself among the confusion. It, quite disappointingly, remains as elusive as ever.

“Please tell me…” The words come out of Cersei’s mouth slowly, three different snakes slithering predatorily towards their prey and barring pointed incisors, “you did _not_ lose the key.”

“I brought it with me, I swear it!” Jaime exclaims for the third time. He spins frantically and looks to the ground surrounding him, a new layer of white dust covering the tracks their shoes had made just moments before. His stomach drops at the realization that what sanctuary lay behind the wooden door is no more accessible to them than it had been at Pazzo’s Pizzeria...a full three miles away. “I must have dropped it somewhere. It can’t be far.”

“’Dropped it somewhere’?” Cersei echoes. Jaime’s shoulders hunch angrily at the presence of cutting sarcasm in his sister’s voice. “You _‘dropped it somewhere’_? Brilliant, Jaime, that’s just bloody brilliant!” Cersei continues to rant and curse, gesticulating wildly until, at last, Jaime finds he’s on the brink of explosion.

“Yes!” Jaime confesses. “ _I dropped it somewhere!_ Why the hell do women feel the need to repeat everything a man says?”

“Because we can’t understand for the life of us how a species can be so bloody _daft_ all the time! How can you remember the significance of the color of a baby’s _shite_ but lose the key to the fucking _house_?”

“Get off it, alright?!” Jaime screams, hands raised in surrender while his gaze still remains transfixed on the pathway beneath him. There is most definitely no sign of a gleaming key hiding beneath the accumulation, and he kicks the brick façade of their home four times.

“I applaud your violent effort to get us back into the house, Jaime, but for fuck’s _sake_ …” Jaime draws back his foot, chastened, and looks at it as if it’s betrayed him. The siblings stand apart in silence, unsure what their next move should be.

“Well then, I s’pose you want us to freeze our arses off tonight, hm?” Cersei asks finally, when no solution has been proffered.

“ _No_ ,” Jaime replies, exasperated, and he hastily removes his jacket to throw over her shoulders by way of proof. Cersei struggles to reject the donation, flailing her arms about and twisting from side to side, but her pregnant belly leaves her movements awkward and not at all fast enough for a successful evasion. Jaime grabs her upper arms to still her, brings his face inches within hers so that identical eyes meet in an infuriated stare.

“Take the coat, Cersei,” he says levelly. She struggles in his arms once more but stops at his insistent squeezing, anger relenting when the coat falls over her body in a wave of warmth.

“This is all your fault,” she whispers, petulant.

“I know.”

“If you hadn’t –” But Jaime swallows the remainder of the sentence within his mouth, pressing his lips against hers and nearly collapsing at the heat of her touch.

“I’m sorry, okay? I’m bloody sorry for being so – what was the word you used?”

“ _Daft_ ,” Cersei finishes, and even though it’s still filled with the same amount of venom, he sees a faint smile tugging at the corners of her lips. He brushes away a cluster of fallen snowflakes threatening to conceal the stubborn, upwards curve, and kisses her again.

“D’yknow a place open at this hour?” Jaime’s watch reads quarter to midnight, and while this was certainly the city that never slept, the current state of the weather was sure to keep everyone – including locksmiths – huddled inside their own homes.

“Mmm,” Cersei murmurs into his coat, “I know of a place nearby. A lady. Doesn’t close ‘til two and she lives in the spare room upstairs.”

“Well, we’d best get on then.” Jaime laughs, “Can’t have that arse freezing off, now can we?”

“A travesty to both American _and_ British soil, I’d reckon,” Cersei jokes with a false immodesty.

“And then some.”

They giggle like two schoolchildren, and Jaime bows his head to rest his chin in that special crook between his sister’s neck and shoulder. He inhales deeply, finds comfort in the fact that she wears the same perfume; that the skin there is just as soft as it’d been before, the familiar satiny-white terrain that he could recite like a poem, paint blind. He’s a boy again here, when he’s held in the folds and joints of Cersei’s body, and he listens to their matching pulse-beats until they’re two indistinguishable choruses of one melody.

“Follow me,” she says, nudging him upwards with a gentle shrug. Righting himself, Jaime’s moment ends and he’s a man again, a _Lannister_ – and an expectant father with a slew of responsibilities sitting upon his own shoulders. He pats Cersei’s bottom playfully, and she rolls her eyes, pulling him along the street towards the promise of an iceless salvation.

He would follow her anywhere.


	3. Chapter 3

In his eighteen years of life, Jaime Lannister had never suspected the gates of heaven to be demarcated by the flashing of a neon sign. The notion seems a trifle too easy, as if the ostentatious welcome were merely a tease of some sort – that acceptance of the hospitality beyond would lead to a prompt exile from their modern day Eden of unobstructed Wi-Fi and Keurigs.

Alas, the building in which Jaime finds himself (which has been somewhat disastrously anointed, “Fortune-Telling and Palm Reading” and possesses no features grounding it firmly in the 21st century) was certainly a temporary escape from the snowstorm outside. It may be filled with an unsettling perfume of incense and China Hut #3, but Jaime is grateful for its warm if not entirely bizarre interior, nonetheless.

“And _how_ do you know this woman?”

Jaime asks the question in the hushed tones of a delinquent pupil, the object of his skepticism rummaging through cupboards for mugs spared of the general disarray of the place. Judging from the dishware fossilized by last week’s lunch, cleaning is not among the shop-owner’s top priorities, and the brief glimpse of the adjoining room does nothing to dispel this belief. The entire space is drowning in a sea of china covered in oily films, molding growths – and here and there sits a full-fledged meal, long forgotten since its initial preparation and left to rot in odorous decay.

“It’s _Madame Margaret_ ,” Cersei corrects. “And I’ve been here once…or twice.”

Jaime swivels his neck to catch his sister’s eye in the moment of confession, both astonished and somewhat disdainful in the way his left brow rises above its partner. He can’t believe his sister – who is as pragmatic as they come – would voluntarily step inside a place promoting the powers of tarot readings and witchcraft even once, much less twice. A firm believer in the concrete rather than abstract, even the existence of Santa Claus had been something of considerable doubt in Cersei’s pre-adolescent mind.

“With a friend,” his sister finishes, though they both recognize the lie before it even turns stale in the air.

“I see” is all Jaime says in response, eyes still trained on the lumpy, square-bodied figure huffing and puffing with exertion on the opposite side of the room. Cersei has no friends – they both know that well enough – and, even so, the accompaniment of a friend would not reduce the oddity of the situation.

“Ah! Here we are!” the heaving bulk exclaims at last. She laboriously extricates two coffee mugs from a mass of assorted junk. Old newspapers, crumpled sweatshirts, books, _a cat…_

Madame Margaret ambles towards them, movements clumsy and bumbling in all her innate gracelessness, ultimately collapsing in an upholstered wing-back with a theatrical groan. She heaves a second sigh, thrusts the two mugs in Cersei and Jaime’s direction, and rests two fingers against her temples as a means of reclaiming her sense of balance. She rubs the sides of her head in a concentrated, circular rhythm while the twins get up, obligingly, to retrieve their respective cups from the coffee table. Once in his grasp, Jaime inspects the porcelain surface for any traces of old coffee. Cersei merely sets hers aside, watching closely as Madame Margaret massages herself into a state of inner tranquility. She recognizes the routine as a precursor to the woman’s “work” – like stretching before exercise – and wonders what ulterior motives might lie beneath Margaret’s kindly extended generosity. If she’s being honest, Cersei isn’t in the mood to have a repeat of her last experience here…

“You’ll have to give me a moment to gather me bearin’s,” the woman explains. “I’ll get ye some tea when I feel as though I en’t about to keel over. Not used to such movin’ abouts, ye ken.”

Madame Margaret is a stout woman of indeterminate age, broad shouldered and yet surprisingly friendly in the arrangement of her face. The plumpness of her cheeks and general rotundity of her shape give her an air of agelessness – as if she could be in her mid-thirties or well beyond fifty – and the ambiguity only adds to the aura of mysticism about her. The rolls of her stomach and thighs more than atone for her breathlessness, though, and Jaime wonders just how his sister discovered this woman, so completely opposite to his golden twin in every way. Even the guttural Scots’ accent made the pairing all the more unlikely, Cersei having long harbored a strong dislike for any of the garbled dialects of London’s neighboring European countries. (“Speak _English_ for chrissakes! Bloody heathens.” she’d grumbled more than once.)

Regardless, the woman’s hair – an unruly mass of black Medusa tendrils – is done up lazily and wrapped with a colorful scarf. Orange, red, and black, it’s as though the fabric is a giant flame atop her head, though its blaze is interspersed with a pattern of dark, unseeing eyes. They look at out and stare blankly at the two intruders, seemingly assessing them and making judgments without their knowing.

“Thank you so much, Madame,” Cersei begins to apologize. “I know it’s late but…” She gestures grandly towards the window, a frame around the increasingly Arctic landscape taking form like a Bob Ross painting outside. The minute Cersei’s hands end their mid-air dance, they resume their position on her rounded stomach, soothing the sporadic thrusts of the child inside her. Jaime watches the scene as if from a distance, noticing the way the tips of Cersei’s fingers just barely brush the surface of her belly; the way her breath hitches every time they make contact with the firm, protective skin there. He thinks – and not for the first time – that perhaps getting Cersei pregnant was not a mistake after all, if it means she should be like this, _look_ like this. The expression on her face is always one of constant awe, and it reminds Jaime of her child-self, the beaming and curious girl she’d once been.

“Nonsense, dearie. I told ye not so long ago that me door is open to ye always.” Madame Margaret’s eyes are an alarmingly bright amber, like the reflection of the sinking sun on a body of water. They shine endearingly at Cersei, forgiving her and Jaime’s late-night intrusion with a faint glimmer of understanding. A small pink tongue briefly flicks across chapped lips, anticipating what profits may come of such a strange occurrence.

“It’s no imposition o’ mine to keep ye here, lass,” she continues, smiling, “though I didna think I should be keepin’ three of ye at once!” Margaret’s stare drops to Cersei’s stomach, and Jaime feels a disconcerting pang when he notices the spark of interest bursting behind the whiskey eyes, the careful way in which they examine every inch of his sister’s physique.

“Yes, well…it’s somewhat of a…new development since I last saw you, Madame.”

“Ah, I can verra well see that!” Margaret closes her eyes, lids dancing with the quick movements of concealed eyeballs, and they open seconds later, all-seeing. “Seven months along, are ye? Not far to go, not far to go at all…Ye’ll have the bairn on the eighth night of February. Mind ye, do seek a different doctor, love. Your current one is a bleedin’ fool.” The room is silent at the prediction, both twins unsure of the proper response such an outlandish claim requires.

“And _this_ man,” Margaret beams, redirecting conversation and turning her attention to Jaime. “A handsome man if I e’er saw one. Tell me, boy, what’s your name?”

For some odd reason, Jaime gets the idea that Madame Margaret already _knows_ his name despite having never met her previously; it’s something in the way she looks at him, reading him like an all too familiar book whose once-tired plot has become intriguing again.

“My name is Jaime, Madame.” He almost includes his last name but decides to omit it, though the expression that blooms on the woman’s face proves she is very much aware of his full identity.

Making no proper acknowledgement of Jaime’s introduction, Madame Margaret claps her hands, shoves herself to her feet, and leaves behind a particularly noticeable imprint of her bottom in the seat cushion. She trudges over to a different cabinet this time, pulling out several tins while muttering quietly to herself. Cersei’s ears prick at the sound of a perfectly-pronounced but strange form of Latin – being a former classics major, herself – and wonders briefly if maybe the woman isn’t reciting a litany of magical incantations. She shakes her head slowly, chastises herself for being so childish. She would not give credence to whatever the women may or may not say – or _had said_ , all those months ago.

“Here we are,” Madame Margaret exclaims, shoving a bulbous and reddened nose into a glass container. “Lemon balm tea. Good for the sickness, mmm?” She cocks her head in Cersei’s direction, and while Jaime’s eyes widen at the woman’s correct assumption, Cersei only nods. She’d been expecting such a thing all along, after all. Margaret promptly begins brewing a small kettle of the stuff, a subtle citrusy odor transforming the place into a grove of blossoming lemon trees. After a couple minutes spent exchanging basic pleasantries ( _How have you been? Your family? What are your holiday plans?_ )the tea is sufficiently brewed, and the Madame undertakes another trek across the room to pour a generous portion into Cersei’s mug. Steam rises up from the hot liquid, and Cersei inhales, humming contentedly at the smell of freshly-brewed leaf tea.

“Thank you.” She sips it eagerly, feeling it slide down her throat like comforting, molten happiness.

Madame Margaret waves the teapot in Jaime’s direction – “Would ye like some for yourself, lad?” – but he rejects the offer with a dismissive wave of his hand.

“Do you maybe have something a bit…stronger?” he asks, minding the beer he’d planned on drinking earlier. Or, better yet, the rum still regrettably sitting untouched in the freezer back home.

Margaret grins knowingly and turns around, returning only a few seconds later with a different tin emanating with an overpowering, herbal scent much different from that of the lemon balm. A Chinese black tea of some sort, Cersei guesses, having familiarized herself with the random facts of various odds-and-ends since dropping out of university. She suddenly finds a small sense of consolation in the fact that she’s managed to retain some kind of useful knowledge during her pregnancy-induced idleness. Perhaps the abundance of free-time had not gone entirely to waste if she could verify her brother was not, in fact, being poisoned.

“I’ll have what she’s having,” Jaime replies, nearly turning green at the strength of the fragrance so boldly floating up his nostrils. Margaret pours the lemon balm into Jaime’s cup accordingly, and he stares at the murky, brown substance with not a little disappointment. He wills it into hard liquor without success and takes a reluctant sip. The tea is hot on his tongue, however, and he figures settling for comfort over intoxication will have to do for the present moment.

After helping herself to a cup of her own tea – a mugful of a third, purplish-black substance – the woman resumes her position in the wingback chaise.

“Now if ye don’t mind me asking – what in the Devil’s name were you folks doin’ out in a storm like this? I havena seen a blizzard this bad since ’78 – and that was in Scotland, no less!” The snort that comes trumpeting out of her large nostrils is alarming enough to maneuver both twins’ attentions from their tea to the Madame’s ageless face, now painted with curiosity. It’s then that Jaime notices the woman’s smooth, fat and frog-like appearance, the wart sprouting from the right side of the woman’s nose and unruly black hair claiming the mount as its own.

Cersei tells their story – with Jaime interjecting here and there in lame attempts at preserving what dignity still remained – while Madame Margaret listens and sips, enraptured by the words pouring out of Cersei’s mouth. Whether genuinely fascinated by the tale itself or merely satisfying Cersei’s momentary need for attention, it doesn’t matter – both brother and sister are simply happy to have someone older than themselves take an interest in their lives. It feels special – luxurious, almost – to be validated by an adult, to feel as though what they say or experience is of some importance to the world. When the regaling comes to a close, Cersei and Jaime share a mutual sense of sadness, knowing that their moment is up and that adult concerns must once again crash to the forefront. (Neither can remember a time when Tywin Lannister had willingly listened to one of their stories.)

“Well it sounds like you’ve had a hell of a night!” Madame Margaret booms at the tale’s conclusion. Her voice is powerful but far away, and Jaime muses that she’s most likely kept the stores of significantly stronger beverages for herself. “I’m glad ye came here, Cersei. I’ll give ye both the spare bedroom upstairs for the evenin’ – no sense in you two tryin’ to go anywhere else tonight.”

Both Jaime and Cersei offer half-hearted protests to the arrangement, feeling at once guilty for their imposition as well as relief for being provided a soft bed to sleep in. But Margaret stands for none of it, stubbornly insisting that the couch right here would do just fine for one night.

“A lass like me – with a rump as big as mine – has no need for all that extra padding n’ sorts…” The woman’s sentence trails off, leaving something unsaid and a sense of expectancy hanging heavily in the air. It suddenly becomes very clear to Jaime and Cersei that neither would be retiring to the graciously offered private room anytime soon.

“I do ask ye, though…” Margaret begins, “Well. I would like to read your fortune.” She turns all focus on Jaime then, makes an effort to explain her request by motioning to Cersei. “Your sister here is one o’ the most interesting people I’ve ever had the pleasure o’ readin’, ye see, Jaime.”

While not entirely surprised by the woman’s statement – his sister was certainly an enigma if there ever was one, completely unsolvable to a mortal man such as himself – it’s the brief acknowledgement of their relation that catches Jaime off guard. At the word “sister”, he starts, confused as to how the woman had come to the conclusion he and Cersei should be siblings, having never said as such since entering the shop. But Margaret, of course, notices the look of wary distrust in his eyes and jumps again at the opportunity to clarify.

“Aye. Ye may have been wantin’ to keep it a secret, but I ken ye two were brother and sister the minute you stepped inside.” The woman looks from Jaime to Cersei, eyeing them from head to toe. “Ye may be fraternal twins, but you’re bloody mirrors of each other if ye want the truth of it!” But nothing more is said – no criticisms of teenage pregnancy, no questions of the child’s true parentage – and the siblings exhale in silent relief that their secret has not been spoken aloud by an objective third party. That aspect of their shared predicament was theirs and theirs, alone. And would remain that way for as long as they could possibly manage.

“Now…the readin’. As I was sayin’, I should like to read you.”

Jaime is looking towards the ground, the reddening of his face deepening and expanding from cheeks to neck as he thinks of the implications of such a discovery. His whole chest would be aflame in embarrassment, should he be stripped bare of his shirt and examined naked in front of his sister and this witch woman. Lucky for Jaime, however, he remains fully dressed, and his anxiety stays concealed beneath the thick layers of his clothes.

Jaime assumes the appeal for a reading is meant for Cersei, completely oblivious that Margaret is, in fact, looking directly at him when she makes her request. Jaime looks up to meet her gaze and watches as an eager anticipation stretches her lips into a gap-toothed smile. He imagines that same pink tongue darting between the slight crevice there, folding itself around the body of a buzzing fly. _Ribbet._

“ _Me?_ ” he asks, incredulous, once he notices the trajectory of her stare. “But I thought you said Cersei was the most interesting person to, er…” He allows his sentence to trail off, unsure how to refer to Madame Margaret’s work, precisely. Was it fortune-telling? Art? Science? Pure bullshit? Whatever it was, he would rather it not be practiced on him.

“Aye, that is so, m’boy. But you bein’ one n’ the same, I should verra well think you’d be just as interestin’ as your sister here.” She gives Cersei a conspirational wink and signals for Jaime to sit at a table littered with candles, books, and sheets of paper. The snowfall outside rains down as steadily as ever and it gradually builds up against the single window, the shop itself located at the bottom of a descending stairwell. In a swell of gratitude for his placement indoors rather than beneath the accumulating snow, Jamie relents and relinquishes himself to the careful prodding of Madame Margaret’s pudgy fingers.

As the fat extremities poke and trace their way along his veins, the lifelines of his hand, the bones of his jaw, Jaime observes Cersei still sitting on the sofa, feet now rested comfortably in the place his absence has provided. He notices the darkened glaze concealing the green of her eyes, the almost invisible furrow of her brows and is startled by the rapid transition from happiness to anxiety. Tension radiates around his sister like a pulsating current, and Jaime tries to grasp it with his mind so that he might tuck it away and puzzle it out later in less perplexing circumstances.

“Jus’ as I suspected!” Madame Margaret cries after a thorough examination. “Yer blood runs thick with stories – an uneventful life is not in your cards, _mo charaid_.”

Out the corner of his eye, Jaime catches sight of Cersei stiffening further as various predictions and insights are relayed and analyzed. _Three children, all golden haired. No spouse in the foreseeable future. A steady career, enough money to live well beyond normal means_ – the list goes on, and the soft, melodic rising and falling of Margaret’s tone transform the words into mere background noise. Like a pleasant humming of bees, the rumbling of distant thunder - barely there but still perceptible to the ear. Above all, though, is the distinctive sound of his sister’s heart, thumping loudly in her chest and creating an off-kilter beat with the soft, hypnotic speech of the seer. It is towards the end of the reading that Margaret suddenly trails off into eerie silence, though Jaime takes it for the natural exhaustion that must accompany such an in-depth exploration of the human psyche.

When the woman lifts her hands from his, Jaime leans back and listens as the drumming perists, strengthened even by the conclusion of the reading. He eyes Cersei a third time, but finds she is no longer sitting on the sofa, having risen at some point in time to rinse out her empty coffee mug. Watching her closely, Jaime notices a brief second of eye contact between Margaret and his sister – and the mutual grimness of their expressions, in particular.

The moment ends almost as instantaneously as it begins, leaving Jaime wondering if his imagination had merely conjured the exchange altogether. He shakes his head and studies Margaret’s hands, taking a moment to gather himself and process the presence of whatever secrets are buzzing around him.

It is Margaret’s subsequent struggle to form coherent sentences that soon convinces Jaime the connection between herself and Cersei was not imagined. The lady’s thick lips open and close, repeatedly emerging defeated each time a word seems almost plausible but not quite.

“What is it?” Jaime asks, curious and afraid and borderline angry at himself for feeling so excluded from the women’s silent communications. He can hear the disdainful admonishment from his father: _No student of Princeton University should believe such nonsense_ …But he feels the tug of Madame Margaret’s words, the pull of her expression, and he can no longer feign ambivalence.

“It’s nothing,” Margaret says quietly – so quietly, in fact, that its contrast to her regular booming baritone raises the fine, downy hairs on Jaime’s arms. “Only that I came across something rather…Well, something rather unexpected, to say the least.” She looks at Cersei, a mixture of worry and pity flickering like candlelight across her features, though the girl is very noticeably trying to turn a deaf ear to the conversation. Cersei stands against the wall, twisting her hands this way and that in transparent agitation, long fingers becoming animated contortionists in her restlessness. Margaret, meanwhile, composes herself with a low clearing of her throat and backwards sliding of her chair, standing abruptly.

“You best be gettin’ some sleep, _mo chlann_. It’s nearin’ 1:30.” She grabs Jaime’s mug and begins clearing the table of various knickknacks. “Dearie me, where’s the time gone?”

Despite Margaret’s best efforts at keeping cool, the sentence comes out in a jumbled and inelegant rush, perfectly conveying the uneasiness her averted amber gaze is meant to conceal. When she moves to assemble a makeshift bed on the sofa, she rests her right hand on Cersei’s shoulder in somber consolation – though for what, neither twin truly knows. A second meeting of the emerald and yellow orbs, however, paints a layer of understanding across Cersei’s face, and once again Jaime feels an unnerving shiver trickle down his spine at his cluelessness.

“If ye be needin’ anythin’ in the night, dinna be afraid to ask, aye?” Margaret clearly intends the offer to stand for both Jaime and Cersei, though Jaime cannot help but notice how her back is to him, as if to protect his sister behind a wall of giant, bodily bulk.

“Thank you, Margaret.” Cersei whispers, placing her own hands atop the plump paw still wrapped around the bones of her shoulder.

“Maggy, love. Ye can call me Maggy.” She smiles wanly, angles herself so as to address both twins this time. She starts subtly at the sight of Jaime, as if only just remembering his presence in her home.

“It’s what they call me,” she explains. “Maggy the Frog, they says.” She laughs bitterly, the intended cruelty of the moniker clearly not lost on her. At the utterance of the title, the wart on her nose appears to grow three times larger, the sagging gullet connecting chin to neck more pronounced, as if responding to a roll call. “They’re are afraid of me, ye see. Throw rocks at me window, playing games that name me villain…”

Margaret shakes her head. “Wee bastards dinna ken that what I see in their readings is far more terrifyin’ than a hag such as meself.”

Cersei casts her eyes downwards, almost ashamed of being allowed access to this inner sanctum of anger and insecurity. Jaime strides over to stand beside his sister, placing his hand in Cersei’s so as to direct her to the stairs and towards more private quarters. The current state of Maggy’s face – coming apart every few seconds and then reassembling into a newer, stronger emotion – is enough to convince the twins that their evening must, indeed, come to a close. There is something disconcerting about seeing Margaret – normally so placid and friendly – lose herself in a vortex of negativity. She isn’t there, not really, lost as she is in the world that’s accessible only to her.

Cersei is surprised to discover a longing to knock the bullying children to their knees, but then remembers that, she too, had been afraid upon meeting the woman for the first time. _Continued_ , even, to be swallowed by this same fear whenever she remembered the encounter. Cersei understands the need to make a mockery of whatever scares you, to belittle it into something laughable so that it doesn’t seem so grave or omnipotent. She’s done it countless times herself and cannot begrudge the frightened children of their taunts, for jokes make even the eeriest of hauntings more bearable.

The silence among the trio permeates every corner of the room, and the twins fumble with their shirt hems while Maggy stares stone-faced out the window. Jaime jolts at the sound of the woman’s voice a few minutes later, the foreboding and ominous tone of it like flash fire shooting through his veins.

“Aye,” Margaret says softly, still staring listlessly towards the snowy scene outdoors. “I canna do anythin’ to them that they canna do themselves…It’s the _people_ , ye see.”

She turns from the window then, looks at Jaime so fiercely that all surroundings seem to fall into oblivion, reducing their world into a single pairing of minds. “It’s the people I meet that are often the scariest of all. Ne’er truly who they claim to be.”

This time it is Jaime who pulls Cersei along, forcing his sister ahead of him and up the narrow stairwell towards their promised lodgings. He mounts each stair with determination, wanting to escape the woman below but finding that his feet are traitorously leaden with the exhaustion and fear of the late-night revelation. He thinks of nothing, save the distance he must wedge between himself and the Scottish seer, pushing away the thoughts gnawing at his nerves and willing the whole of the universe to return once more.

But despite the walls between them and the closed bedroom door, despite the warmth of Cersei’s naked body and the calming winter winds outside, Jaime’s feelings of uneasiness cannot be kept at bay.

For despite it all, Jaime Lannister still feels the power of Maggy the Frog’s gaze, horrified and sad, carving accusations into his flesh and naming him false.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Excuse any Gaelic errors. This was all a result of a growing obsession with Outlander, so I honestly just threw random terms of endearment in here!

Cersei Lannister spends most of her nights in much the same way: consumed by an agonizing discomfort, assuaged only by the excitement of impending motherhood. It has become an exhausting routine, this pregnant restlessness, of both embracing and refusing the massive bulk of her stomach. Between the struggle of pulling it close and unsuccessful denial of the thing, Cersei is lucky to snatch a decent amount of shut-eye – and tonight is no exception.

After an hour’s worth of tossing and turning, Cersei decides her efforts are damn well futile. She rolls out of bed, springs creaking beneath the uneven distribution of her weight, and turns to find the mattress has molten to the shape of her body in the form of a large, crater-like depression. Within it, she imagines, lie the invisible remnants of an hour’s worth of endless worrying ( _How will we get out of here? How will we explain this to Father? How will we get back in the house?_ ) and she turns her back to it in physical and mental rejection. She cringes, recalling Madame Margaret’s own fossilized arse in the cushions of her wingback, and prays a similar fat and amphibious fate would not befall her, too, should tonight’s various disasters have any lasting effects.

Her legs feel insubstantial from the prolonged stillness, and she creeps clumsily around her brother, now splayed to the side of the bed in the boneless formation of one in deep sleep. His chest rises and falls in a familiar musicality – up, down, up, down, the same lullaby she’s fallen asleep to since birth – while saliva oozes from the corner of his mouth in a graceless globule. Cersei observes him in half-hearted jealousy, having always envied the boy’s ability to sleep wherever, _whenever_ while still enjoying the intimacy found in watching a lover at their most vulnerable. He looks like a child, all flushed and limp with unconsciousness, and she wonders if this is what their son will look like eighteen years from now. (Though the kid could do without the drool as far as she’s concerned.)

Despite being twins, Cersei had not inherited Jaime’s knack for instant sleep. Her Aunt Genna – a fellow night crawler and insomniac, herself – often called Cersei “the golden bringer of dusk and dawn”, celebrating both the sinking sun and its ascension in equal parts when sleep would not come. Cersei shook it off, ever-aversive to romantic ideals, but was secretly enchanted with the poeticism of the notion. She had let her aunt lull her slowly off to a dreamworld countless times, where she served as the sole guardian of the sun and moon, a goddess marking the beginning and the end of the universe beneath her feet.

It could be a lonely job, though – this daily vigilance of the world’s death and rebirth – but then Jaime had always been at her side, shouldering some of the burden in his own way (albeit without much ceremony). Sometimes awake but asleep more often than not, Cersei had always pretended the sound of his breathing is what would harken the arrival of the light and dark, the final transformative step of their silent partnership.

(Distance – emotional and physical – had changed that, though, and now Cersei was left to welcome night and day alone.)

Cersei stumbles blindly to the wooden table across the room, stirring Jaime for a moment but not enough so that he wakes. She gropes blindly into the darkness for her cell phone, swollen fingers brushing against an assortment of unidentifiable objects during their search. She knocks over what seems to be a candlestick, then feels the soft cloth of a felt-doll ridden with sewing needles – and quickly remembers her whereabouts. The sickly pungent odor of incense and ethnic food coalesce into a blanket of fragrant memory, and the events of the evening come flooding back: the fire, the blizzard, Maggy...Suddenly the child inside her – _Joffrey_ , she smiles to herself, though she’s too superstitious to say it aloud – gives her kidneys a swift kick, a fierce protest to his mother’s distress.

“Fuck!” she curses, thinking too late of Jaime’s sleeping form at her feet. Her brother remains completely still despite the noise, ever the immovable bolder during slumber. She rubs a soothing palm over her belly, inhaling a lungful of the odorous air.

Equanimity relatively restored, Cersei finally grabs hold of her iPhone and switches on its flashlight, flooding the small room in the ghostly luminescence of a haunted manor. She squints, eyes adjusting to the newfound brightness, and inches towards the stairwell, a late-night snack (and perhaps an alcoholic beverage consumed in secret) luring her to the downstairs kitchen. She’s almost positive she remembers where Margaret hides the fine Scottish whisky, having partaken in some herself upon her first visit (“Before I tell ye what I saw, lass, ye ought to have a wee dram.”). And surely one drink would be harmless to the child…

When she reaches the first-floor landing, she is unnerved by the foreign calm that greets her. The shop – so eerily alive during the light of day that the walls themselves seemingly exhaled and inhaled with the constant flux of activity – is an entirely different beast at night. The towers of miscellany littering every inch of space suddenly appear ominous and threatening, taking on the shapes of hunched demons or cloaked murders in the shadowy darkness. The glow of the crescent moon streams through the windows in wraithlike beams, casting a grayish and hazy glow about the main room that very appropriately befits the place. It is, after all, a business built on the fears and ghosts of its patrons.

Cersei hears Madame Margaret’s snores droning sonorously from the sofa and can just barely discern the silhouette of her froggish nose in the evening light. The woman moans softly beneath her breath, ultimately sighing back into full unconsciousness once Cersei quiets her falling footsteps. She feels the quick thudding of her heart revert back to its normal pace, hopeful that a third encounter might just be avoided with a lighter tread.

Before Jaime had left the bed to make camp on the floor, she had relayed her plan of a hasty pre-dawn flight into the golden curls of his chest. He’d been more than keen to agree, eyes widening in relief and brain running through different methods of escape as he’d stroked her head, her shoulders, her breasts with tender fingers. After mulling over the consequences of staying for breakfast – all of which they had no desire to incur – they had decided upon the simple plan of leaving a note and fleeing an hour before sunrise. A few written words of thanks for the generous hospitality, and they’d be out the door before Maggy rose…which, they both presumed, was likely to be far earlier than the average person. 4 A.M. it was, then.

Stomach churning audibly, Cersei opens the fridge and scans the shelves for anything that might satisfy her unbidden cravings. Save for a carton of expired milk and three bottles of mustard – each one covered at the spouts with yellow crust – there is absolutely nothing edible inside it, and the erratic grumbling persists in stubborn appeal. The cool air of the fridge blows into Cersei’s face, and it’s only then that she realizes she’s dripping in sweat despite the chill of her surroundings. Gingerly shutting the door, she moves to the freezer and breathes a sigh of gratitude upon discovering the icy boxed is, in fact, fully stocked and blissfully cool. She settles on a Nestle Drumstick in favor of the other more organic fodder, peels back its wrapping to reveal the chocolate dessert beneath.

“Cersei, dearie, is that you?” The sound of Madame Margaret’s voice comes croaking through the glowing gray of the room.

“ _Bollocks_ ,” Cersei huffs under her breath, regarding the dripping cone as if it were a turncoat deserving the noose. Her body being considerably warmer than is normal, the Drumstick begins to drip down Cersei’s fingers, melting in a shared longing to be invisible and thus spared of the witch woman’s scrutiny.

“What was that, love?”

“Um, er…nothing!” Cersei chirps between a mouthful of ice cream. “Yes, it’s me.”

“Ah…” With a loud of cracking of joints and an animalistic grunt, Margaret heaves herself from the improvised sofa bed and trudges towards the kitchen. Her amber eyes glow in the combined glare of phone light and moonbeam, making her appear more predator than woman; peering hungrily through the darkness for a more advantageous view of her prey.

“What in the Lord’s name is on yer face, child?” she asks, the question filled with a co-mingling of laughter and criticism. It leaves Cersei feeling unusually self-conscious, and she sputters an incoherent response, righting herself and regretting this midnight foray into the kitchen. She runs a clammy palm across her cheek, unsure what the woman is even referring to herself, and comes away with visible smears of melted chocolate staining her skin. How Maggy was able to see such a thing from her current distance – and in the dark, no less – Cersei doesn’t care to know. Questions, she’s discovered during her brief stay here, were best left unasked.

“Oh,” Cersei says sheepishly, “I was just…”

“Eatin’ to yer heart’s content, no doubt.” Margaret finishes, turning on the kitchen light.

Cersei mumbles an apology, moving quickly to discard the evidence into an overflowing trash can nearby.

“Dinna fash yerself, lass. I remember carryin’ me own son and feelin’ as though I would eat my right arm if I didna get a bite o’ somethin’.” She pauses and looks dubiously at Cersei’s ice creamed-coated fingers, a small bit of cone remaining in spite of having only just opened the thing. “Though I dinna remember bein’ quite so _barbaric_.”

Cersei ignores the minor slight and finishes the dessert in a final chomp. She speaks once more through a mouthful of food, signature confidence regained. If Madame Margaret’s abhorrence of savagery would get her back upstairs and freed from the woman’s company, then so be it. “You have a son? I didn’t know that.”

Margaret lets out a barely perceptible _tsk_ at the sight of sloshing food within Cersei’s open mouth.

“Aye. He’s a man-grown now but, yes, I have a son. Name’s Alexander. He lives down in Texas.” Judging by the strong presence of contempt in her voice, Cersei figures Madame Margaret is none too pleased with her son’s current state of residence. The woman bustles about distractedly, dropping to her knees with a labored grunt and wiping away a droplet of melted ice cream from the warped flooring.

“What’s wrong with Texas?” Cersei asks, intrigued despite herself. She pops an index finger between her lips, sucking off any remaining sticky sweetness and tasting the underlying layer of her own salty perspiration. Briefly, she thinks of Jaime’s cock, and the resulting phantom tingles leave her craving escape even more so than before.

Maggy offers a groan of sheer exasperation, as if the faults and inadequacies of the Lone State were emblazoned on the surrounding walls, mere facts of common knowledge. She begins shaking her head and clucking disapprovingly, looking at once both chicken and toad, gullet swinging and jowls jiggling in the brisk movement of her head.

“It isn’t Texas itself but rather _why_ he’s there. Yer not the only one who knows betrayal, I’m afraid.” A hint of a warning carries itself within the deepened tenor of her voice, and the reference does not go unnoticed. But Cersei knows better than to pursue the subject further – though her mind is too preoccupied by the simple utterance of that filthy word, _betrayal_ to even consider otherwise. It tastes like blood, metallic and sickening, drowning her tongue in its foulness. _Betrayal._

But Cersei doesn’t know betrayal like Maggy claims she does – _wouldn’t_ know it, even – until the incorruptible hands of fate saw fit to bring it forth and reveal itself to her. There was no set time frame for the unfolding of destiny, after all. Seers’ visions were never helpful in the ways you ineffectively willed them to be, and this uncertainty only increased the burning crux of Cersei’s fear. Betrayal would inevitably come – Maggy had told her that long ago – but when?

It had been ten months since her first visit with Maggy, but the woman’s prophetical words still rung as clearly in the air as if she were reciting them now. It had taken a reasonable amount of threatening, of promising, and – when those had proved unsuccessful – pleading to coax Maggy into relaying all the details of her foresight.

“Tell me everything,” Cersei had commanded. And tell her everything Maggy had.

“Your children…will not live long.”

The statement had come out so unexpectedly that Cersei had been thoroughly taken aback by the sheer force with which it struck her. Like a sudden jab to the jugular, windpipe obstructed, and within the resultant gasps for air were the echoes of Cersei’s dying children. Dead before they were even born, bones before flesh and dark before light; she had not held them and yet she had felt the unmistakable pain of a mother’s loss as if she’d caressed their tender heads, their pudgy hands, every inch of their bodies molded by and within her own.

 _I will not have children_ , she had promised herself, for it was better to never have a thing than to suffer the crushing grief of its being stolen. But this promise had dissolved, of course, beneath the warmth of Jaime’s skin against her skin, his lips against her lips, his passion matching her passion. And while Cersei had allowed herself to be loved into wholeness, she’d willingly let the vow shatter into sharpened fragments, forgotten for the sake of completion. Tiny knives, cutting away the years their children had not yet begun to live…Moments they would not see but that Cersei would always hold in the palm of her hand, etched lines more death than life.

Not one for public displays of emotion, Cersei had tried to maintain an unaffected exterior, holding her breath to keep such fears behind the walls of abstraction. Judging from Maggy’s resultant, pitying gaze, however, Cersei had been able to deduce that she’d failed to mask her inner turmoil and suddenly the gravity of the situation became much more concrete...

The woman had been wary to continue, that much was obvious, but such fearful reluctance had sparked Cersei’s curiosity with a morbid fascination.

“Tell me what else you saw, Margaret.”

Maggy’s lips had pressed tightly together, whitening beneath the applied pressure, and she had made a move to stand and put an end to the reading. Cersei had shot out a stilling hand to keep her seated, eyes beseeching and filled with the need of one still stubbornly fanning the embers of a useless hope. _Please._ The woman remained in her chair, conceded and proceeded in a shaky voice:

“There will be a betrayal. By someone you love. I – I canna tell who, but they – they will...”

“What? They’ll what?” Cersei’s fingers had extricated themselves from the woman’s wrist and had instead clutched the edge of the table, nails digging into the polished wood and leaving behind remnants of her dread. The weight of her dead children had been sitting on her chest since the revelation of their fates, and she’d wondered what else might be added to the burden. She leaned forward, impatient, awaiting what carnage her own exploded and shredded heart might leave behind.

“It wasn’t clear, lass,” Madame Margaret had said in empty reassurance, though Cersei had not known what exactly warranted the effort of such gentleness. “The visions are sometimes blurry. I could only see…” She’d shaken her head, confused and sad and frightened all at once.

“What did you see, dammit!” There had been no kindness in Cersei’s tone, only a misdirected hate for the cards dealt her and her own. She’d loathed the woman for telling her of the impending darkness, but she would be damned if the other details were kept from her. Could preparation prevent the doom? Could knowledge change the future? She’d thought so, and so Cersei had persistently fought for more clarification.

Maggy nodded, somber.

“I saw hands – I do not know whose. Tears in green eyes, the echo of children’s whispers. And a red river running down a bank of white, blood and neck…” The bizarre explanation was nearly incoherent, all jumbled and twisted beneath the strength of Margaret’s shock and horror, but Cersei had nodded, prodded, _begged_ for further details. Her interrogation had been met with only apologetic shrugs and sorrowful _I didna see, a nighean, I didna see_ ’s – all except the last.

“Whose blood was it, Margaret?” Cersei had posed the question with a contrived nonchalance, outwardly waving away any anxiety with a blithe dismissal. Internally, she’d been screaming.

The woman’s gaze, removed to whatever distant realm the workings of the future lay exposed, had returned to Cersei’s face. She had not flinched, she had not blinked.

“Yours.”

 

Several minutes pass before Cersei’s mind finally returns to the scene before her, belatedly realizing that Maggy has, in fact, been regaling her with the details of her son’s betrayal. Having only just grasped the tale’s conclusion, she deduces it had something to do with Alexander’s newfound religious fanaticism and consequent disapproval of his mother’s line of work. There had been a public denouncement of some sort – “when I’d gone to visit him and his wife in that wretched place” – and this had promptly severed all ties between them.

“I miss him every day, but I willna tolerate such hate in my home. And for that, I dinna ken my own child anymore.”

Cersei wonders if this is how her own wheel of fortune might spin, if someone – that unknown _someone_ destined to shove a knife into her back – might become as unfamiliar to her as a random passerby. She shivers and consults her mental list of possible suspects, a subconscious defense mechanism against the various threats and dangers looming ahead. There was always solace to be found in preparation.

But among these names, there is only one whose voice and face and well-built frame she could not bear to see turn stranger, darkened by the shadow of Unknown. Emerald eyes, golden hair, a crooked smile beneath a razor sharp nose – pieces of her as much as the person to whom they belonged. Without them, she would see only the reflection of a half-forgotten ghost in her bedroom mirror, the shared parts of him and her dissolved into shapes and lines beyond all recognition. His nothingness would seep into her own marrow, rendering her a stranger to herself just as much as he was to her.         

“It’s the boy, ye ken.” Maggy states cautiously, breaking the silence that follows the sort of discomfort bred from personal confessions. Her voice cracks at the word “boy”, as if the woman speaks of both Alexander and the sleeping form upstairs, pregnant with the pain of loss, of physical and mental distance.

“I know.” Cersei replies, matching the woman’s tone with a disturbingly contrasting blandness. She twists her fingers into knots of bone and flesh, imagines them fading to oblivion with the rest of her body.

“Ye’ve always known, aye?”

“Yes,” Cersei whispers, “I’ve always known. In the back of my mind, somewhere.”

Maggy regards her curiously, squinting and nodding in the mutual understanding of two women thwarted by the men they loved. The glaring similarities between them set a vortex of fear churning within Cersei’s gut, and she longs yet again to be far removed from the Madame’s omniscient sight and the likenesses linking them together.

“But knowin’ a thing is not same as hearin’ it spoken aloud. Just as knowin’ of cracked bones is not the same as hearin’ ‘em snap in front of ye. Is it now, lass?”

“No. I s’pose not.” The developing lump in Cersei’s throat grows two sizes, and she swallows audibly to rid herself of the obstruction.

“Dinna be afraid, _mo leannan_. Jaime loves ye, I canna help but see that. Ye have time. The Devil does not work quickly and he can be stopped if ye let in the light o’ the Lord.”

“Mmm,” Cersei says, watching as the seer’s mouth expands like that of a hungry toad’s, the wail of an exhausted yawn booming from its cavernous depths. Maggy nods her head then, acknowledging the end of their conversation and bidding Cersei a silent farewell before returning to the sofa.

Cersei flips the kitchen light switch and walks upstairs swathed in darkness, thinking of Margaret’s words and letting their jagged edges bring forth the blood her own brother would eventually spill.

_It’s the boy, ye ken…He loves ye, I canna help but see that. Ye have time._

She promptly sees Jaime in a flood of fragmented images, with his identical face and identical limbs, with his identical hands throttling her identical neck. She pictures the corpses of their children lying at their feet, drowning in puddles of their own blood, as red and gory as the ancient sigil of their Lannister name.

_The Devil does not work quickly and he can be stopped if ye let in the light o’ the Lord._

But wasn’t it already too late? Hadn’t it _always_ been too late?

Cersei had never shared in the blind faith so many placed in the pages of a musty tome, in the words scribed by long-dead disciples. Promises made centuries ago rang hollow in this present day, when death and destruction permeated every corner of the universe, subsuming both the guilty and innocent. Cersei had never believed in the benevolent God that created and forgave all – for where was He when her mother had died? Where was He when she and Jaime had been born two separate beings instead of one? Little in her life had confirmed the existence of an Almighty Being or warranted a belief in His power and ultimate goodness.

Instead, Cersei and Jaime Lannister had emerged divided in body but joined in soul, wrenched apart from each other’s all-consuming embrace when the warmth of their mother’s womb gave way to the coldness of reality…What was left behind was an electric incompleteness, an intrinsic desire to reach out and grasp the wholeness which had been taken. And this, Cersei knew, _this_ is what had bred their sin, their supposedly monstrous evil. This is what had left her feeling forever cold to the adulations of a Christ figure.

They had been born with the Devil sitting upon their chests, their two hearts held tightly in his red-fingered grasp. Doomed from the very start, the shared means of their own separate ends. Living together and dying apart.


	5. Chapter 5

They meld in the darkness, bodies moving as a single tidal wave that shakes the earth beneath them. The world buckles under the weight of their passion, rain and dirt and sand swirling in a raging mass that folds and encloses them within its fury. They ride the same crests and plunge downwards into the same troughs, drowning and sputtering as the point of their jointure erupts into a million tiny sea creatures, propelled forward by the force of their current. Long, wispy arms and legs reach ever-outwards for a deeper, safer connection, ultimately finding sanctuary in the warm, wet creases of their united limbs.

Jaime’s hands are hot upon Cersei’s breasts, though she feels phantom fingers closed around her throat instead, throttling and depriving and vengeful…But for now, she reassures herself, he is still hers and she is his, and what bonds lie between them remain, threads pulled taut and plucked to resound in a hymn of symphonic moans.

_I will not leave you._

_I will not let you leave me._

Their souls collide with each thrust, and there is a final spark that melts away the ghost’s icy grip upon her skin. She sighs, shudders, and hears the unspoken words of their vows echoing in Jaime’s labored breaths.

When they are finished, the fire quenched, their flesh is still tattooed with these promises. Time and prophecy will blot them out and remove these remaining stains with the vigor of their truths, reds and purples fading to the alabaster of skin yet untainted by betrayal. But for now they shine brightly, defiantly.

For now.

The siblings possessed and were possessed, if only to thwart what Fate-driven beings dared contradict their loyalty…But the possession of the soul is merely finite, and each returns to its respective owner, tides drawn in different directions.

Jaime and Cersei lay apart, individual beings side by side upon the musty mattress, aware of their separateness and the unrelenting distance that Maggy’s revelations have forged between them. Jaime rests his palm upon the curve of his twin’s belly, caressing the firm bulge as though it were the apex of their love, the anchor amidst what stormy seas were to come.

_I will not hurt you._

_I will not let you hurt me._

They drift off to sleep, Jaime’s hand still resting upon their unborn child, but Cersei feels nothing of his palm’s warm presence within her dreamscape.

There, her stomach is flat and she is alone. Her lungs cry out for more, and she cannot remember her own name.


	6. Chapter 6

Jaime nudges Cersei’s side some hours later, waking to the sound of pleas for help from a savior not forthcoming. He shakes her harder, calling her back to him, though she remains asunder in whatever universe exists within her and without him. He cannot remember a time when he’s seen Cersei sleep – as prone to insomniac episodes as Cersei was, _she_ would always be the sentinel keeping guard over their sleeping family – and finds it disconcerting to witness the paradox of their physical closeness and mental distance.

“Cersei,” he whispers, brushing her cheek gently. “Wake up. You’re having a bad dream.” There’s a fugitive splotch of crusted chocolate in the corner of her mouth, and he wipes it off, feeling her come alive beneath him as she tastes the familiar tang of his skin.

“Mmmm?” she hums incoherently, one eye slowly prying open to match his own identical stare. He detects a sense of relief for having safely returned to reality, and suspects her fitful tossing was in some way related to the night’s events. Even now, Maggy’s ominous presence penetrated every sentence, every movement.

“Okay?” he asks, licking the finger with the remains of the sugary leftovers. He smiles, remembering the sweetness of Cersei’s tongue when she’d roused him earlier, whispering, _I need you_ and _Show me you love me_. The chocolate accounted for that, then.

“A night terror,” he repeats, tucking a blonde curl behind her ear. She swats him away, ever reluctant to admit weakness, and hauls her bulk into a sitting position. The obvious discomfort reflected in the awkward strain of her back reminds him of the impending storm: a few more months now, and he’d be a father. A fucking father.

Jaime Lannister is not entirely sure he knows what it means to be a father, having never truly felt as though he had one of his own to lay claim to. Tywin Lannister may have been a commandeering and omnipresent figure in his life, but Jaime felt it blasphemous to assign him such a sentimental title. “Sir” was more appropriate, “an untouchable god” that required sacrifice for any kind of communication even more so, truth be told. But Jaime supposes he’s seen enough of American films and television – dads throwing footballs to their sons; dads teaching their daughters how to swim – to know the right things to say and do. _How to become a bonafide Mr. Brady_ , he thinks, nearly wincing at the thought of a plagiarized fatherhood.

His sister notices the wariness of his expression, and rolls her eyes in typical Cersei fashion. A skill she had likely inherited in place of Jaime’s sleeping abilities, his twin had somehow mastered the art of conveying disdain with the mere whites of her eyeballs.

“Jaime,” she says sternly, “You’re more prepared for this than I am.”

 Jaime leans back to gain a better view of his sister and confirm that she is, in fact, completely serious in this confession of his superiority. From the severity of her drawn brows and firmly closed lips, he ascertains her sincerity.

“You’ve read every bloody parenting book known to man,” she says, laughing and poking him in the ribs. Jaime echoes her joy with his own suppressed guffaw, mindful of the sleeping Maggy down below, who surely would cast some sort of spell upon them should her slumber be disturbed…

“You’re right. I _do_ know the importance of a shite’s color, consistency, frequency, and…”           

“A real shite guru. Gandhi for babies. Will you show him the way to enlightenment, you think?” Cersei says it jokingly, patting her belly in deference to baby within, but there’s an under-current of doubt flowing through her words: _Will you help me raise this child?_

Jaime is unsure what his sister needs him to say, for the girl he’d once known would have been loath to ask for any sort of help, regardless if it was his own being offered. The months of their separation combined with the transformative powers of pregnancy have made Cersei fuller in more ways than one, rounded and bursting and warm with energy and life. Granted, he’s used to her heat – it has always flowed freely through her veins, scorching him in an intoxicating cocktail of pleasure and pain – but there had been a sharpness, a coldness that had lurked just beneath the surface, once…

Now, though, she is pure warmth. Hot like the sun, burning brighter than ever, and sometimes Jaime must admit that he’s afraid to touch her.

Finally, Jaime manages a meek and worthless: “I’ll try my best by him, yes.” And as with Cersei, there is more buried underneath this superficial layer of nonchalance, concealed for the sake of their shared Lannister pride: _I will do all that I can. I will protect him. I will love him. I will care for him. And I will not be ashamed._

Cersei pulls him to her breast, nudges his head downwards so that he rests there in that special place where he feels safest, the most complete. Perhaps the answers and words they cannot summon will be found there, and he will whisper them into her flesh, reading her responses amidst the Morse code pattern of freckles dotting her collarbone. Perhaps there, too, he will come to understand the woman she has become and bridge what distance has suddenly sprung up between them.

They lay in silence for several minutes, enjoying the proximity denied them all these months apart, and listen as the howling winds subside, mirroring their fatigue. The twins will rise and escape in an hour’s time, but for now there is only this moment of clinging to the sense of wholeness found only in the marrow of each other’s bones.

“There was a time, you know,” Cersei starts suddenly, voice disturbingly hollow and vacant. “Where I thought about it.” Jaime squeezes his eyes shut, willing the revelation away, but it suffocates them both with the painful sting of near-loss. Jaime forces his head up and away from his sacred crook, clears his throat of the venom gathering there at the mere suggestion of the deed.

“About what?” he asks, feigning ignorance. But he knows. He’d known back then, too, when she had rejected his phone calls, stared straight through him as if he did not exist.

(But then if he hadn’t, then neither had she.)

“Getting rid of him.”

Jaime cringes at the use of the pronoun, a blatant acknowledgement of the life they had created and the subsequent, perverted desire to eradicate it completely. He pictures their son withered and forgotten in the dark womb where, in truth, it did not - no, _should_ not - even belong. (But it was. And it did.)

“Why?” he asks, barely audible in spite of the pervasive silence of the room. His imagination continues to run rampant, visions of his abandoned sister floating before him. Purple rings beneath her eyes, hands tracing the barely-there outward curvature of her abdomen. Pressing and hating and yet – proudly possessive, all the same.

“You had left me. I was alone. With father.” Cersei tacks on the final statement with unconcealed acerbity, as though the company of Tywin Lannister was in itself a valid justification for ending a life. “You left me…” she says again. “And I didn’t know who I hated more. Me, for letting you do it. Or you, for doing it.”

She soothingly glides her fingers through the golden locks of his hair, idly massaging Jaime’s scalp while letting her mind wander to whatever headspace she had occupied then. The loneliness, the desperation, the fear…And it was that _fear_ , above all, that had set her gut churning in a whirl of rage and hate – for herself and for Jaime – and left her gagging, clawing viciously at her own throat. She’d been ready to tear her own flesh apart, dreaming of knives and swords and whatever other pointy objects might break her and rip her, if only to find sanctuary from the fear.

_Fear._

A thing so disgustingly repulsive that she had seen no other way of dispelling it than from eradicating whatever thing had begun taking shape inside her womb. Rip out the baby, rip out the fear – like a damned, pestering weed. And she would do whatever methods necessary to prevent it from returning – for Maggy’s prophecy would not come true. Cersei would not allow it.

"Cersei, I had university. I had responsibilities, obligations…” Jaime’s voice infiltrates the walls of her memory, though the feelings still remain in spite of the sound, the hands grasping her shoulders. _A damned, pestering weed._ Cersei clenches her fists, tries biting her tongue but fails.

“ _I_ am your responsibility. _I_ am your only obligation.” Cersei proclaims the declaration with such authority that, for an instant, the ridiculousness of it is dwarfed by a startling sense of truth. The should-have’s and the could-have’s come forth, and wittle Jaime so that his guilt jabs him in the ribs, the chest, the groin - all the places Cersei knows him best.

Jaime almost apologizes, but doesn’t. He pushes down whatever resentment he feels towards his sister and her selfishness, rips off the imaginary badge of shame. Jaime is sorry about many things, but he’s not sure leaving is necessarily one of them.

More silence; greater tension. Cersei continues stroking her brother’s head, but there’s an aggressiveness in her movements that was not there previously. Her fingers yank rather than glide, as though she longs to rip out the strands of his hair, too, like the weed and their almost-dead child.

"You could have stayed…” she whispers finally, tone deflated and sad. “You could have taken me with you. We could have gone somewhere.”

Jaime sits up abruptly and kisses her hard, lips smashing together and teeth clashing in all the gesture’s clumsy passion. He makes no reference to her comments, for Cersei knows entirely too well that such dreams are simply that – dreams. Fate had never been on their side, and escaping the realities of their situation was never, _could never_ , be an option. Secrecy and concealment were their only allies.

“What made you change your mind?” he questions instead, and when he sees his sister’s face crumple in response, he realizes that she will haunt him always. No matter how the years would transform them both, no matter what selfish desires or fears or actions drove a wedge between them – Cersei would always exist within him, a part of him.

"I woke up one morning,” Cersei begins, composure relatively regained and eyes fixed on her swollen body. There is no trace of the reproach Jaime would have expected of his sister, but only an air of expectancy, understanding, and profound acceptance. “And suddenly it – _he_ – seemed like something…more. It felt different; he felt different. And I thought, _Thank God you’re here_. And I didn’t do it. I couldn’t.”

“I told myself that if I had him,” Cersei continued, no trace of emotion in her tone. “At least I would have someone – this person – who was bound to me, needed me. Who was me but not me. Who was you but not you. Who was …us.”

Jaime shakes his head and has to suppress a chuckle, understanding neither the giddiness bubbling inside him nor its source. Maybe because any other reaction would do his sister’s revelation a grave injustice; taint the beauty of her rare vulnerability. Or perhaps because he is simply happy that there, inside her, they would exist joined together forever – as they should have been from the very beginning.

"And Maggy? She had nothing to do with any of it?” Suddenly, the memory of Cersei and the witch woman’s silent exchange flits through his mind. In it, there is only the mirrored reflections of sadness in both amber and emerald, deflating his momentary buoyancy.

Cersei shudders at her own recollections of the Madame Margaret, and refuses to even repeat what visions the woman had seen all those months ago. Cersei was in no mood to resurrect old demons; let them lie in their graves until their bones turned to ash.

“You would never betray me, right?” Cersei probes instead, craving – _needing_ – reassurance, nonetheless.

“What?”

“You would never hurt me? Or our son?”

“Cersei –” Jaime leaps vigorously to the defensive, feeling his integrity questioned and threatened. His eyes widen in response, mind clouded with a thick layer of bafflement and confusion.

“Promise me.”

"Cersei, I would never. I –” His promise trails off at the sight of his sister’s shoulders sagging into immediate relief, breath coming out in a gust of wind that expels what aching fear had thrived within her.

“Okay,” she says noncommittally, features painted with a mixture of newfound calmness and stubborn uncertainty. She shuffles uncomfortably on the bed, stretching out her limbs so that the joints crack with the extension of her legs, and then sighs back into their shared pillow.

“Jaime,” she asks hesitantly, “Why do you read all those baby books, anyways?” Her tone is filled with playful mirth, and he exhales deeply at the disappearance of his sister’s distress. He twists his fingers – a nervous habit he hadn’t noticed they’d shared until this very evening – and looks up at her sheepishly from beneath his lashes.

"To know him.”

Cersei regards him with open curiosity, eyes imploring him for further explanation.

“I was scared, too, y’know. And beastly angry. Not necessarily at you but – at him.” He points to his sister’s stomach, remembering all the feelings of rage and jealousy that had assailed him upon the announcement of her pregnancy.

“Here was this thing – this baby, that I wasn’t even bloody sure I wanted – and he was going to waltz on in here and, and...The idea that you might love him more...” Jaime stops himself, overcome by the childishness of his former envy, and throws his hands up in the air. “It was stupid, really, but I thought it best to know my enemy before he showed up and got to bury his face in your tits whenever he damn well pleased.”

Cersei smiles and chastises him teasingly with her eyes, drags his hand downwards so that it rests once more on her stomach. The child kicks at the added pressure, and Jaime laughs despite himself, excited at the prospect of this paternal acknowledgement.

"They’re _mine_ , mate,” Jaime asserts, referencing the heavy mounds of flesh that lie just above Cersei’s belly. He looks up, suddenly embarrassed.

“I s’pose we’ve not been the best of parents to the chit. Christ, and he hasn’t even been born yet!”

Cersei smirks, “You reckon he’s doomed?”

“More or less. You think he’ll recognize me?”

“Are you _really_ still on about that?”

"It’s just that – “

“ _Yes_ ,” Cersei huffs in half-hearted exasperation. “I’ll make sure of it. I’ll tell him all about his _wonderful father_. How he cooks Bolognese, sets houses on fire, loses keys, and knows everything there is to know about infant shite…”

“So basically how much of a twit I am then, hmm?”

“Precisely.”

“S’pose that’ll have to do for now.”

“I only mean to be as accurate as possible.” Cersei taps the tip of his nose with her forefinger and struggles to roll onto her side. “Spoon me, will you? It’s fucking Monkey’s in here.”

Jaime does as he’s told, molding his body around hers so that they fit like two puzzle pieces, a golden-green Yin and Yang. He fondles Cersei’s breasts, and smells her hair – the fragrance of overpriced shampoo clouding all senses, save for the feeling of her bum pressed suggestively against him. They move slowly and gently together for some time, losing all grasp on time and place, until sleep pulls them into her own warm embrace. They remain entwined together in the same dreamworld, where prophecies and promises could be broken, mended, made fresh by the mere existence of endless possibility and endless allies. There, they need not hide and there they need not fear.

The growing light of dawn comes creeping through the curtained window, cloaking the room in a blue-white glow that casts softened shadows down the planes of their faces. The differing shades outline the structure of cheek and jaw, similarities thrown into plain sight for any who cared to observe the scene before them: Cersei and Jaime tangled upon the tiny bed, small children alight with dreams. A unit of two, soon to be three. A family.

Cersei stirs and opens her eyes, feeling her brother’s body still engulfing her own.

“Jaime,” she whispers, “Tell me one more time.”

“Mmm?”

“Tell me again, what you said before. I need to hear it.”

Jaime groans quietly, and pulls her closer.

“I will not leave you. I will not hurt you. I will not betray you. I promise.”

Cersei breathes deeply, wraps her own arms tighter around his, fleshy vines choking and holding and claiming each other. Jaime leans forward sleepily and brushes his lips against her neck, tickling and nibbling at the vulnerable, soft skin there. Cersei nearly flinches, but steadies herself, allowing the sensation of his mouth against her throat to force any enduring doubts into retreat.

“Do you believe me?” he asks eventually, though she recognizes the languor of his voice as one readily surrendering to unconsciousness. She kisses his fingers, each one as strong and capable of tenderness as it is of violence, and feels them all over her, everywhere.

“I don’t know,” she murmurs. “But I s’pose that’ll have to do for now.”

END.


End file.
